The Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (IPEA), founded in 1964 during the national authoritarian developmentalism and under the influence of technocratic thinking, can be characterized as an institution that has experienced moments in its historical trajectory, having its bureacratic capacities oscillated considerably. Based on the assumption that there is a developmentalist lineage in Brazil, where the State is considered a fundamental actor in the processes of production of development arrangements, based on political pacts and public tools, it is sought to understand if the capacities and actions of the IPEA, an institution that represents a kind of intelligentsia within the state apparatus, are influenced by the different national moments and, specifically, by the conceptualizations regarding the role of the State and the planning in the generation of national development. In this sense, the aim is to analyze the bureaucratic capabilities of the institution, with a special focus on its mission, during two contrasting national moments, experienced in a recent period in the Brazilian trajectory: neoliberal orientation, represented by the Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB); the new-developmentalism moment, represented by the governments of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and Dilma Rousseff (PT). Since the end of the 1970s, the institution has experienced a process of displacement of its primary function, of advisory and policy making, in the State its privileged interlocutor, for the production and dissemination of knowledge, having in society an interlocutor. This reversal of terms becomes clearer during the neoliberal moment, but deepens in the new-developmentalist moment, when the capabilities of the institution are strengthened. There are indications that the institution also experienced a change in the profile of its technical staff and in its intellectual production, where the largest public competition in the history of the institution, in 2008, and the creation of the Diretoria de Estudos e Políticas do Estado, das Instituições e da Democracia (DIEST), in 2010, appear to be paradigmatic. There are indications that during the new developmentalist moment, IPEA widened the scope of research, inserting new areas, themes and approaches, becoming a more heterogeneous institution in order to encompass the multiplicity of issues brought about by the reinterpretation of the idea of development.